Poison

A hitman's job goes sideways when the woman he's hired to poison becomes the center of a manhunt he can't outrun. Told in tense first-person present, this 1950s noir classic follows a killer who, in the moments after the deed, realizes he's already a dead man walking. Evan Hunter's lean, hard-boiled prose turns a simple contract into a meditation on guilt, fate, and the cost of a life built on violence.